So maybe I’m a bit young to be worrying about this as I’m 19 years and old and still in yeshiva, but I do want to start dating by the time I’m 21 and I know that I won’t be getting any financial support from my parents because they can’t afford to. My father is what I would say modern orthodox and my mother isn’t really religious. I’ll be starting college courses along with yeshiva this fall. I want to know if it’s realistic that anyone would date someone without family money, or would I have to wait until I am working full time and can then support on my own. And 2., will my families relatively weak commitment to Judaism be a problem for me despite the fact that I am very committed to a Torah lifestyle?

there’s someone for everyone and plenty of fish in the sea – there’s no science to this and no “right way”. don’t worry about it now just make good moves in the right direction and you’ll cross that bridge when you get to it. may you have good mazal

LOL. I thought for sure this thread was started by a female.
1. I gather from your post that you are not coming from a place where learning in kollel is the norm and the wife and/or her family support the couple.
Even so, the fact that the kollel set-up is so prevalent, and that it is also very common for the wife to work even if the husband is not in kollel, has changed perceptions and expectations, and it is no longer a given that the husband must provide for his wife before he can get married. Considering how long schooling can take in certain professions, couples would have to wait until they’re in their mid-upper 20s to get married if they waited until they were set up in their careers. Many girls work part time even while in college, or maybe their parents will help out.
2. Some people care about family background, some don’t. You probably would find it easier to date girls from a similar background.

To Winnie: Why do you say its the minhag for the wife and/or her family tsupport a full time kollel yungerman? I would assume that he would first seek support from his own family first before asking his wife’s to support them and turn to his the machatonim only if his own parents are unable to help.

Gadol-I didn’t exactly call it a minhag, I just said that in some circles, it is accepted that if a girl wants to marry someone who will learn in kollel, than either she and/or her parents will provide the means for the couple to live. the boy’s family are busy supporting their sons-in law.
No comment whether this is right or wrong, good or bad or whether it can work for everyone.

I am not the ‘typical’ member of the CR in that all of my children, myself and MRS CTL AND our sons-in-law and daughters-in law have college and professional degrees. This means each individual has earning capabilities that can let each couple stand on its own.
You are pursuing a college path as well as learning. You are very young and need not rush to marry until you are in the workforce. I know that many will consider this as heresy, BUT the frum community needs baal batim who can support our institutions financially as well as those who mostly learn and are not in the workforce full time.

From experience, I don’t believe that family money should be the support of young marrieds, giving a hand now and then is one thing, true full financial support is another.

The most important thing about family money and financial background is that you and your eventual bride should not come from a very different socio-economic background. There are enough other problems in a marriage without this type of huge roadblock to happiness.

All of our females in the CTL family including my mother, mother-in-law and grandmothers (all American born) had professional careers (law, accounting, teaching, real estate) besides raising families and running a household in partnership with a husband.

I still cook, wash dishes and do my own laundry and help with grocery shopping. When I married Mrs. CTL all those years ago, I was marrying a partner, not a housemaid/cook

its the husbands job to support the wife or did nobody ever read their kesubah and therefore not get married unless they have a plan to support the wife this plan may include wife working, parents/in laws, support, etc

“The kallah’s family giving the chasan a dowry is an age old Jewish minhag’

The concept of a dowry is NOT uniquely a yiddeshe minhag and many traditional and tribal societies arrange for the girl’s family to initially provide some gift, whether a sum of money, a few goats and cows, or whatever the local minhag. However, once they are married, why is there any rational basis for the girl’s family to continue supporting them, if the boy is a full time learner? The girl may decide to work but the girl’s family may have other children at home to support (both boys and girls) so it makes no sense to have such a unilateral funding obligation. Again, its what people willingly agree to and such practices may be the local minhag but we should be moving towards the next generation where there are opportunities for bochurim to work part-time so as to provide at least minimal support for their families and also provide better education and job skills to girls so they can support their husbands if they don’t want to work even a few hours a week.

Joseph……………….
you have no scientific type data to back up your claim and such a study was ner performed by a group such as the Pew Report.

OOT is a different world. If I look at the communities I’ve lived in, the Stharkers (baal batim) who built and funded the synagogues, day schools, yeshivos going back to my parents’ generation (born 1920 in the US) were men who married after completing their college educations and starting in the work force. Some, like my father, married during WWII and after being disccharged form the armed forces started career and family in 1946.
The vast majority of the pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to the US wanted to live the American dream in harmony with Jewish Observance. That meant college education (my parents like many at CCNY and Hunter) then marriage, jobs, children.
The Kollel phenomenon and early marriage while being supported by parents and in-laws only became common with the arrival of post WWII immigrants and those escaping the Hungarian Revolution.

We both can ONLY present anecdotal evidence on this issue, but I dispute your claim of ‘vast majority.’

What you’re saying is that the moneyed class is better off marrying someone else from the moneyed class, as that’ll have a better likelihood of being a successful marriage than if he married a poor or middle class girl, correct?

Even prior to the Kollel boom the large majority of frum Yidden, even before they left Europe whether due to the war or Hungarian revolution, married young before achieving any career or higher ed – even though they went to work rather than Kollel.

But the world has changed. There is an increasingly growing phenomenon of college grads being underemployed or unemployed. Many professions require graduate degrees that take years to complete. Add a few years of post-HS learning before college (common even among those who don’t proscribe of the kollel lifestyle) and by the time the young man has a job to support a wife and family he is not so young anymore. It is not very practical to expect young men to wait until they are in their upper 20s or nearing 30 to get married. So I can understand where Joseph’s statement is coming from even if he does not have the evidence to back it up.

No one is talking about 60-80 years ago, we are speaking about current times and the baal batim who build and support our Torah institutions in the late 20th and 21st century CE.

Your comments about the majority of Frum Jews in Europe is laughable because the VAST MAJORITY were barred from higher education by anti-Jew laws.

My paternal side came to the USA in 1872 from the Litivish Heim, my maternal side in 1868 from Bavaria. They were restricted by law to certain trades and barred from the Universities in most cases. By 1880 my great grandfathers were in University in the US. ALL my grandparents attended university in the nineteen teens. The men went on to get medical and legal degrees. The women got degrees in education and licenses.
I grew up on a block of 6 single family houses built in 1951. All were occupied by Frum families. All 6 husbands owned their own businesses, 5 had college degrees. The sixth was trained in electronics by the US Army during WWII and he owned and operated a chain of TV/Appliance stores (his children all went on to college and professional school after yeshiva. 5 of the women has college degrees, in fact my mother had a doctorate in child psychology and was a school principal. The 6th woman was a registered nurse. In those days it was a 3 year post high school program, but offered no Bachelor’s degree.
There were 35 children in those 6 families. We went to day schools, yeshiva high schools of Chabad girls high schools (there was one in town). Every single one of us went on to college and more than 20 to graduate school. Not one married before college graduation. Some like my eldest sister graduated college in May and married the week after Shavous.
Now we are all grandparents, we didn’t let our children marry until they had a proper education and could make their own way in the world. Even my Brother-in-Law, who grew up 2 doors from us and went to Torah Vadaath, also completed a college degree before my father would allow him to marry mys sister. He went on to spend 40 years as a pulpit rabbi, finishing 2 advanced degrees while working.

Back in Europe, you might have been able to find the odd Frum medical doctor, but the open opportunity for higher education was closed to Frum Jews.

You said: “Class and income are not the same thing. I’ve met many a wealthy person who is low class and many a poor person who is refined and well bred.”

But earlier in this thread you said: “The most important thing about family money and financial background is that you and your eventual bride should not come from a very different socio-economic background. There are enough other problems in a marriage without this type of huge roadblock to happiness.”

CTL said: “The vast majority of the pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to the US wanted to live the American dream in harmony with Jewish Observance.” Maybe they wanted to, but they didn’t. Four words: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

We frequently hear that the importance of having the necessary education and skills to earn a parnassah is overstated and there are “many” successful chareidim that have achieved financial success without even having gone to college, much less earning an advanced degree. Yes, I’m sure there are natural, self-taught entrepreneurs who have made millions but I suspect that is a very small percentage of the Chareidi tzibur. Sadly, the poverty and welfare dependency statistics for many chareidi neighborhoods and communities tells a very different story. Likewise, its true we have always had full time learners, but again, as a percentage of the total, the numbers were much lower in the pre-war alte Heim and in post-War EY and the United State than they are today. While some girls may be fortunate enough to come from affluent families who have the resources to support them, in most cases, the families are already living on the economic margin and the absurdly high costs of a chassanah and then weekly checks to to support a new son-in-law who wants to shteig 24×7 puts them over the breaking point. We need to encourage more girls to get the secular education and job skills so they can be economically self-reliant and revisit the quaint notion of finding some balance where after a few years, a kollel yungerleit will work part time to help support the family while still finding many hours a day to learn as well. That has been our historic tradition and we need to move back towards economic self-reliance across all yideshe families. There is no imperative to marry in your late teens versus early 20s so you’ve had the opportunity to get at least 2 years of college with a focus on employment skills for available jobs that can be done from home (aka computer skills for tele-working).

As a male, I don’t think you have to worry about your parents not having money. It’s unfortunately become the norm that the girl’s family is expected to offer support, and the girl is expected to work (even as she has children, who she’s supposed to immediately send to day care so she can continue working). My advice would be to wait until you’re only a year from finishing your degree before you start dating, so you can start being the main source of support soon after marriage.
As for being rejected for being a BT/having non-religious family, there’s nothing you can do about that. The right girl for you won’t be concerned about it, and anyway you wouldn’t want to marry someone who judged you for things you can’t control.

The fire was a tragedy in 1911. 146 people died, mostly of Jewish and Italian heritage. 146 people is not the vast majority of immigrants.
The level of observance varied in the immigrant community, just as it varies in America today.
Most pre 1924 Jewish immigrants to America were ‘Euro-Traditional observant, not what we call Frum today. Today’s Frum American Jew has a much better Torah education than those raised at the turn of the 20th Century in the US. Most US Torah institutions were in their infancy at that time. Many had only a rudimentary Jewish education in the old country (or in America) they observed rituals in conformity with the community standards. Because they were no longer forced to live in a designated ghetto, shetl, Pale of Settlement, they often made choices to change their level of adherence to halacha.

My point was that it was very common around the turn of the century for Jews to be mechalel Shabbos (the fire was on Shabbos, and a large number of the victims were Jewish). I don’t think there are any statistics that show how many Jewish immigrants were shomer Shabbos (which to me is a minimal standard for living “in harmony with Jewish observance”), but the Triangle fire demonstrates that it was quite common for them to be mechalel Shabbos.

torahlishma613:
You at least have a realistic plan for your future, which is more than what could be said of most guys your age. So don’t worry, you’ll be fine. The girls will be lining up out the door.

The halacha is not that he has to work – it is that he has to make sure that his family has a parnassah. As long as the family has a parnassah (and he did not do anything assur to obtain that parnassah), he has fulfilled his obligation.

If for example, he is independently wealthy, he does not have to work. Likewise, if his wife wants to work and she earns enough money for the family, he does not have to work. On the other hand, he would not be allowed to tell her that she has to work. Of course, if he feels that it is in the family’s best interest that she work in order to support him in kollel (or for some other reason), he can certainly discuss it with her as long as he does so in an appropriate way.